Obama’s Latin America Policy: Continuity Without Change

May 2011, Mark Weisbrot

This article was written for and published by the journal, Latin American Perspectives, May 2011.

When Latin America’s left presidents watched the campaign of Barack Obama for president in 2008, they thought that they might finally see a U.S. president who would change Washington’s foreign policy in the region. It seemed as if another revolt at the ballot box was arriving in the Western Hemisphere of the kind that had elected Lula da Silva, Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Fernando Lugo, and Tabaré Vázquez. It didn’t take long for all of these leaders’ hopes to be crushed.

This paper highlights various episodes of the Obama administration's recent foreign policy to Latin America. Examples of policies, including in Honduras, Haiti, Venezuela, Colombia and Bolivia, show that Obama has maintained Bush's foreign policy in the region, in some cases even moving further to the right, thus maintaining the rift between Washington and the region.